Appeal for repentance and truth in the new film by Pavel Chukhrai 17/06/2017 automatic translate

SOCHI. At the opening of the «Kinotavr» premiere of a new film by Pavel Chukhrai «Cold Tango».

The reason for the long absence on the screens of new films by Pavel Chukhrai is numerous «no». The habit of choosing uneasy plots, asking uncomfortable questions, inability to beat money to film their films and unwillingness to do so for deals with a conscience. The script based on the story of Efraim Sevela’s «Sell Your Mother» was not sent to the eternal resting place of the failed projects. The right stars all the same agreed, and the «Cold Tango» took place.

The film’s synopsis fits in a few lines. Lithuania, the middle of the XX century, the war, the period that preceded it, the time that came after it. The love of a Jewish boy and a Lithuanian girl, a dramatic intersection of the fate of the grown-up heroes, a catastrophe that grinded their lives and feelings. More than one hundred thousand dead Soviet soldiers, 200,000 Jews tortured in the ghetto, a quarter of a million deported to Siberia, sent to the GULAG Lithuanians. Bitter statistics made in the epilogue - the first step on the road to truth, the determination not to turn away from it.

The director is convinced: only the truth gives a chance for repentance, without which there is no future. Otherwise, what is the road that does not lead to the temple. In a 1994 article dedicated to Tengiz Abuladze’s «Repentance,» the critic Ninel Ismailova came to disappointing conclusions. She spoke about the lack of spiritual renewal against the background of external evidence of change. On the inability to genuine repentance, fatal to any society in the time of trials, and sometimes leading to them. Parallels of the masterpiece dedicated to the victims of the totalitarian regime, farewell to illusions that have not lost relevance in 33 years, with «Cold Tango» are obvious.

In the palette of Chukhrai there is no monochrome, which gives heroes the features of finished scoundrels or saints. It is also inappropriate when trying to understand the tragic moments of a common history, a catastrophe that touched everyone. Will this call for repentance and truth be heard by a wide audience, time will tell.